From the Shadows
by Tallictr
Summary: An old man tells the story of his life through video diaries. In them he recounts his relationships, adventures, misfortunes, and extensive efforts to prevent a madman's systematic extermination of an entire group of people from striking fear into the heart of the wizarding world at large. Efforts that beg the questions: Who is Joseph Andrew Hawthorne? And how did he do it?
1. Chapter 1

_Hey. So this is a story that only has two chapters written so far. This one and the one I'll post afterwards. Leave me a PM or a comment if you'd like more. See you guys, and happy reading._

 **Video Log 1**

After years of trying my damnedest, I have succeeded in creating the conditions needed to make a second attempt in life. And many more after that. I will not go silently into the void until I feel I have done all I can in every way I can.

And before I go through with what I am about to attempt, I feel it would be best to recount my adventure from the very beginning. If I fail, I can at least fail knowing that my 173 years of life will not be forgotten so easily.

So, the beginning.

My time here began in the wonderful world of Magical Britain. On October 31st, 1970 I was born under the name Joseph Andrew Hawthorne. Born to what I would later learn to be a dying Pureblood family with me as its sole remaining member.

Now, even though I said we'd start at the beginning, we'll just skip over the first few years of me realizing where exactly I was, plotting to ensure my survival several years from then, the shame of wearing diapers, and the terrible existence that was being an adult man trapped inside of an infant. Instead, I'll summarize.

The first two years of my life were spent in the care of the Hawthorne family's only active house elf at the time. The rest of them were in what I liked to call 'hibernation mode' until I became old enough to take on the mantle of Lord Hawthorne.

It was just me and Tippy from the moment I was born and every day after that. And to make it easy on her, I was the best-behaved baby anyone could ever have. I ate when she fed me, I moved around so as to not have eternal baby fat later on, I cried only when I truly felt like shit, and when I actually shit I made sure to not be so fussy about it.

After those two years, I began my extensive education under the portraits of the various men and women that were the Lords and Ladies Hawthorne when they were alive. Interestingly enough, I found that the oldest among them was nearly two thousand years old.

That meant that the Hawthorne family had been in existence since the time that muggles began to fear magic and those who could use it.

The full story, according to said oldest portrait, was that her father, whose even older portrait was lost several centuries ago, preemptively hid his family away from the rest of the world when signs of magical intolerance and suppression began to make its way to their doorstep.

He and several other magical families formed a small underground community that would eventually be destroyed by the ones who feared them. Only four families managed to make it out alive; the Hawthornes, the Blacks, the Prewetts and the Weasleys.

I made sure to remember that, as well as the several dozen blood debts that both families owed the Hawthornes for sheltering them when they faced extinction. There was even a book of all the blood debts the Hawthornes were owed by many _other_ families.

The only reason no one ever collected any of them was because the Hawthornes 'disappeared' in the last days of the Crusades. Everyone thought they were dead, and had completely forgotten about them.

And by the time 1972 rolled around, there were no witches, wizards, texts, or anything else from the crusades that knew about or held any information on any family that held the name Hawthorne.

And with that fresh in my mind, I decided then and there that I would be the one to bring the Hawthorne name back from the dead. Of course, this would only be a temporary revival. After the second war with Voldemort, I'd live out the rest of my days planning my family's return to obscurity.

It would take several hundred years and presumably multiple magical and non-magical wars to erase our mark on the world, but I still believe it can be done. And if not, then the next timeline I'm in will succeed where this one couldn't.

With the approach of the advancing technological world in mind, I was smart enough to recognize that being discovered was no longer mere possibility, as the portraits suggested.

But rather than explain it to them, I let them think that I agreed with their assessment of muggle capabilities and decided to just deal with that stubborn shitstorm later. I knew what battles to win and what ones to lose. It was just how dealing with them worked.

When I first came to this world, I only knew three things. One: I knew I had lived another life. A life where I grew up to be an old man and then reincarnated here after dying.

Two: The only thing I could remember about my old life was general information and that I loved the Harry Potter series. That was it. No family, friends, work, likes, hates, allergies. Nothing but out of context life lessons and Harry Potter related crap.

Let me tell you, it pissed me off something fierce in the beginning. But I worked through it with time, so it wasn't even a real issue.

And three: My mind was a malleable combination of adult and baby, because from the moment I woke up I had these baby instincts try to control me. Things that babies usually did when they were recently born.

Crying for my mother was one of the harder ones to resist, as was crying in general, but after days of fighting I managed to wrest control of my body from whatever used to be the baby part of my new brain.

This showed when I was learning from my ancestors for what felt like eternity but was actually, like, fifteen. It was a surprisingly long time. Well, it _was_ a long time. But you never really realize how long it is until you live like a lonely scholar during all that time.

At first, I was unsure of how much I could learn from portraits. They were just portraits! Then I was unsure of how _I_ could learn anything. I wasn't sure how my baby-man hybrid mind would affect my learning potential.

But then fifteen years passed, and I turned out to be a fucking rock star at magic, not to mention a jack of all trades.

I could cast silently, apparate and disapparate, a single hand movement and I let out powerful spells without the use of a wand, transforming into a Gray Wolf was the result of three frustrating years of trying and not being able to, and I apparently come from a long line of metamorphmagus.

The wizards in the books and movies didn't seem that amazing when I compared it to what I could do. But then again, not many of Britain's best made it out of the first war.

The day I turned seventeen, however, was the day my magic took a turn for the powerful. Becoming Lord Hawthorne meant that I needed to be powerful enough to protect my family from extinction.

So, as I put on the Hawthorne Family ring, the magic that surrounded the Hawthorne bloodline acted and did something I still haven't managed to understand past making my magic slightly more powerful.

With my full name now being Lord Joseph Andrew Hawthorne I was free to leave my family's ancestral home for the first time since I'd arrived. It felt slightly surreal. But I was never one to dwell on such fleeting feelings and went for it.

I said my goodbyes to the portraits of my parents and the rest of the family, packed enough clothes to last me several weeks without having to wash them, made sure Tippy was okay with remaining in the manor until I called for her, and then got the hell out of here.

After apparating out of the manor and into a cozy looking neighborhood, I combed the street looking for 4 Privet Drive. Not because I was looking for a seven-year-old Harry Potter, but because 5 Privet Drive was right next door and I was looking forward to seeing what my new home for the next four years looked like.


	2. Chapter 2

_Again, let me know if you guys like this story. If not, I'll move on to something else. See you guys, and happy reading._

 **Video Log 2**

The first year of living at 5 Privet Drive was amazing. There were so many things that could happen over the course of a year, and somehow, they all happened to me.

The night I found my new house, Tippy and I spent hours unpacking all of my things and making my house look as stylish as possible. Unfortunately, I had the bad luck of having no sense of style whatsoever.

Which meant that it was me unpacking and Tippy telling me where I needed to put things. But while I was doing enough heavy labor for ten of me, levitation charms are amazing like that, Tippy was cooking enough food for twenty.

The day I had arrived, I spent a few hours going door to door and introducing myself to people. I started with the people I didn't actually know, because Arabella Figg wasn't home, and worked my way over to the Dursley's.

Not going to lie, so don't hate me for it if you knew Petunia, but I was and felt like a deer in headlights the moment she opened the door.

The books that had described her as having an occasionally horse-like face and the actress who played her in the movies weren't as accurate as a lot of people might have hoped.

But I've always been under the impression that she was only portrayed as physically ugly because her personality was ugly as well. As a matter of fact, I had found her to be downright attractive. Still do.

And while I wouldn't notice it at first, that was a two-way street. Though, looking back, it should have been something I picked up on right away because look at who she was married to. It was no wonder she wanted ditch the bitch and get a piece of hunkberry pie…

That was terrible. I'm ashamed of myself for even saying it. The worst part is…I'm probably not even going to go back and edit that out. Terrible. Lazy and terrible. Now I don't want anyone to see this…*sigh*

Anyway…

Back to meeting us meeting for the first time!

She stood at the doorway with her arms crossed, waiting for me to say something. And I tried. I tried, and I tried but the words never came out. Eventually I'm just standing there smiling like an idiot and she's still waiting.

And after taking some breaths, the smile never went away, I felt focused enough to speak.

"Hello, um, my name is Joseph Hawthorne. I'm your new next-door neighbor." I held out my hand. "It's a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss…?"

Giving me a smile, she placed her hand in mine. "Petunia…" We held each other's gaze as I brought her hand up to my lips and held them there. It took several stunned seconds before she took her hand back.

She quickly followed up with "Dursley! Um, _Mrs._ Petunia Dursley. I'm married." She firmly nodded her head. But it felt like it was more to remind herself than it was to inform me, because even when she pulled her hand back, it wasn't an angry or upset kind. It was more like an 'Oops! I'm married and we shouldn't be doing that!' kind.

"Well, whoever he is, he's lucky to have someone as lovely as you on his life." I was quite shameless in my endeavor to woo her.

And in my defense, she was the first person, and _woman_ , I'd seen in nearly twenty years who wasn't an elf or a magical talking portrait. So, _hell_ _yes_ , I was pulling all of the recently created stops out for her.

"Would you mind if we go inside and," I leaned in a bit lowering my voice to conspiring whisper. "get acquainted with one another? I'll be living here for quite some time, so why not spend some of it making some" I leaned in ever so slightly. "close friends."

She nodded dumbly and retreated hastily into the kitchen make some tea. A retreat that provided me with a rather nice view.

"You have quite the home here, Petunia." I walked down the hall in front of the front door, looking at everything I could. Harry's cupboard was an odd thing to see in real life, but I paid it no real mind.

Messing with her was kind of fun. I can still feel the sensation of my chest tightening up a bit whenever I did. Something you can never truly get tired of.

"It's one of the nicest I've ever been in, and I've been in a lot of nice homes." I almost laughed out loud as I heard her accidentally drop something in the sink in a flustered panic.

If I could keep this up, the next four years might be a _really_ fun time. For me _and_ for her.

"So, um, Mr. Hawthorne," I raised my hand. "Please, Petunia. Call me Joseph. We're going to be friends, aren't we?"

"R-right. So, Joseph, why'd you move to Little Whinging?" Yes. This was Petunia Dursley. Neighborhood gossip. She may have been my girlfriend in the making, because trust me I _was_ making progress with her, but that wouldn't stop her from being her regular snoopy self.

"Hmm. No reason, really. Just sort of travelling Europe. I'm sort of looking for something. Or really, _someone_." I looked at her when I said that. "I mean I'm young, no family to speak of, no purpose in life. I figured the first step I'd take in the real world is to find someone to spend it with."

The look on her face was, now that I think back on it, akin to an adolescent schoolgirl meeting her favorite romance novel's author. And I have two daughters and several granddaughters, so that was a face I'd seen many times in my life.

It was almost like the Universe was saying 'This one! Take this one here! I gave you all the tools, just don't fuck it up!'

And I didn't. I could have continued to mess with her awestruck heart, but that was when Vernon came home. The man, contrary to his wife, was exactly how I thought he would be. Fat. Just, fat. Nothing else could accurately describe him.

Yet, none of her reactions from before could come close to the one she gave when she looked at Vernon, then to me, and then back to Vernon. It only presented itself for a second before she reigned it in, but it was like when you see the before and after picture of someone in a weight loss program.

Before: 300 pounds from 30 years of jelly donuts.

After: 220 pounds of dense muscle from 15 years of training.

Before anyone could say anything, I got the hell out of there. "Well, Mrs. Dursley," The look she had was back with a vengeance at the fact that I didn't use Petunia like I did before. "It's been lovely talking with you. But I have a house to unpack."

I turned to Vernon and extended a hand. "Hello, Mr. Dursley. I'm you new neighbor, Joseph Hawthorne. Nice to meet you." He shook it, with a surprisingly firm grip. "Yes, nice to meet you as well. Now if you'll excuse me, I've had a long day at work. I'll see you around, yes?"

He left into the living room, sat down on the couch, and tuned out the rest of the world s the television came to life.

"It seems this is where we part, Petunia." I spoke low. "I'm having a party in a few days. Can I expect to see you there?"

She thought for a moment before deciding, still unsure with all that she's seen, heard, and felt today. "We'll be there. Should we bring anything?" I shook my head. "Only your good company." We shared a smile and I left.


End file.
